Cherubim, Curtain, Cross, & King

Sixty stunning feet in length--a holy towering height. Impossibly thick, and heavy with weight.

Exquisitely twined linen. Yarn spun blue and purple and a red called scarlet. Embroidered symbols, angels raised in relief. Who stitches scary looking creatures on a curtain? 

The threads of angelic faces glow fierce—supernatural guardians of God’s glory. Their symbolism sears our collective memory with the heartbreak penned in Genesis 3. Its final sentence positioning people wholly apart from holy God. We see cherubim placed--merciful grace to protect us from the threat that is ourselves.

The sin of our first parents separates. (tragedy)

As we've come to expect, Jireh provides. (hope)

This time, provision looks like a curtain that covers His holiness. Shielding unwieldy children, so they can experience His Presence without risking their neck. A sheer act of grace.

Lest we raise a defiant word or fool ourselves into thinking “it’s only fabric”---our mouths will be swiftly stopped by the graves etched "Nadab" and "Abihu." Truth told in stone. 

Only a perfect sacrifice.

Offered the perfect way. 

By the perfect representative—

dares to enter the Holiest place.

Make no mistake; our God is a consuming fire and we are the people of unclean lips.

The years march on and so do innocent sheep. A constant dripping testimony: sin demands death. Dark liquid filling the streets. Sticky and staining and visceral. Ugly and raw. The mirror image of rebellious hearts beating inside the children God calls beloved. Stiff-necked and spiraling downward. Are they determined on their own destruction? 

El Shaddai suffers long.

Does not slumber.

Needs no rest.

His eyes are only watchful---seeing all. Beholding evil and the good, as people of His own possession bend low their bodies. Not with joyful reverence of worship, but in forceful response to foreign oppression. 

Prophetic voices seem silenced. Stretches of years with only tears—and the crumbling words of Malachi for comfort: 

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet, before the great

and awesome day of the Lord…”

Deliverence. A dream nearly dead.

But in the silence of centuries, Yahweh prepares the Way. From a darkness 400 years and counting, the Redeemer rides onto the horizon. Sun of righteousness rising, Malachi’s message made flesh. The euangelion is here.

The hanging veil sees its service nigh finished, a vigil nearly done. A fourth-mile west, a man hangs too. A tree sees our first sin, now a tree breaks its power.

He is a first-born. (The perfect offering)

Unblemished by the sin we can’t seem to stay clean of. (The perfect human representative )

Blood flows, and He groans. The burden of severed relationship weighing down like the curtain that separates. His life offered, not taken. (the perfect way)

The world goes black, air more oppressive than any Roman hand. Three hours stretch infinite. Heavy, dense, nothing makes sense.

Now, a shift. A stirring from the breathless near-dead sacrifice. A work of millennia, reaching crescendo in the weary exhale of words:

“It. Is. Finished.”

His head bows. His spirit leaves. His body rests from the completed work we could never accomplish. The voice of a Roman soldier cries out truth: a coronation has occurred.

On the temple mount a tearing is heard. The noise of it incomprehensible. Ripping not of human hands—this slash starts at the top. Dwelling place of I AM, now accessible to man.

The purchase of this privilege? One spotless Lamb.  

Our wounds, our shame, our innumerable rebellions––fully, completely, and finally ransomed by blood. A red called scarlet. 

Who’s sin? Mine.

Who’s blood? His.

Once. For all.

Perfection of redemption.

I’m acutely aware that the math isn’t fair. How absurd a thought that mercy is free. 

But the curtain is torn, and a temple stands here. Rebuilt in my body, illogical thought. The powerful Presence once guarded by four-faced creatures—now living—breathing life—in me? 

A curtain ripped down.

A kingdom rises up. 

We lift our eyes and fix our gaze. 

Sunday (and Someday) is coming! ✨

When the darkness gets darkest, our King is on the move.